TECH - Tablets in Education

It feels like it was just a couple of years ago that the iPad was released.  Since then, it has quickly taken off, selling millions and millions of units and inspiring Apple's competitors to release their own versions of tablet computers that offer similar features.  It is safe to say that tablets have taken over the world, to a degree.  Anyone can use them.  Adults can use them to check e-mail, teens can use them to create media, and children can use them to play games like Angry Birds.

So why not educators and students in the classroom, too?

While the tablets all have their own strengths and weaknesses, there is one thing that they all share: they are all electronic book readers.  Nook, Kindle, iPad, Surface Pro... all of them have book stores that are just a few taps away.  And this feature is one of the greatest reasons why many schools have recently chosen to adopt iPads and other tablets instead of textbooks.  For one, carrying around a tablet is much more convenient (and lighter)!  But it is also almost always the case that purchasing a textbook on a tablet is much cheaper (sometimes up to 50%!) than buying the physical version of the same text.  So not only is it a more convenient way to read textbooks, it is also cheaper, too, and schools love being able to save money.  Add to this the fact that some tablets, like the Kindle, offer book rentals as an alternative to full purchases, and that makes the price even cheaper.

If educators are going to use tablets in the classroom, we need to do more than just use them as an alternative to textbooks.  Devices such as tablets and smartphones are becoming extremely prevalent in daily life for people today.  We've got to take advantage of the popularity of these devices and learn how to use them to teach more effectively.  Luckily for us, there are hundreds of applications on the app store available to use.  And most of them are very cheap!  There are media creation apps, like iMovie, Garage Band, and Comic Life, that allow our students to create videos, audio and images.  Beginning the school year by asking our students to create a comic strip about what they did over the summer is a great way to get them writing and creating media on the iPad, and it is a fun way to let them be creative, as well.

In the future (and the present, as well), it is going to be very important for school and educators to adopt tablets, and learn to use them to their fullest capabilities.  Devices like the iPad have taken over the globe, giving people a computer that can fit in their hands, and that they can take with them anywhere.  It is an incredibly useful tool, and they are not going to go away any time soon.  Therefore, it would be wise for us to take advantage of the tools and apps they have to offer, as well as the alternatives that they provide to using traditional textbooks, at a much more affordable price.  There are hundreds of ways to effectively use tablet computers to teach, learn, create, and play in the classroom.  It is up to the current and future generations of teachers to provide our students with the best ways to use them.